Inside the fast-moving launch of Kamala Harris for president

Three weeks into her presidential run was the first time the Biden campaign’s pollsters — now hers — held a deep-dive call with Kamala Harris’ inner circle to discuss what she’s been saying on the stump.

Three weeks into her presidential run was the first time the Biden campaign’s pollsters — now hers — held a deep-dive call with Kamala Harris’ inner circle to discuss what she’s been saying on the stump. Over the line came a lot of praise, but also some suggested tweaks. First, said veteran Democratic numbers man Geoff Garin, summarizing their analysis, stop saying, “We’re not going back.” It wasn’t focused enough on the future, he argued. Second, lay off all the “weird” talk — too negative. Harris’ advisers listened. They considered the arguments. They decided to stick with what the crowds were chanting in the arenas. When advisers who had been on the call briefed the vice president on the suggestions, according to CNN’s conversations with close to a dozen people involved with internal campaign decisions, she told them she wasn’t going to listen to the pollsters herself and would instead trust the instincts she had buried under self-doubt for so long. Harris has shocked even people close to her with how she’s been coming across in the just four weeks since she became a presidential candidate. Many political obsessives who had largely written off the vice president can’t understand how a woman whose early struggles they still keenly remember is now projecting as succinct and punchy, comfortable onstage and in her own skin. Part of this is a strategic decision to limit her appearances and hold off from sitting for an interview, so that her only major moment without a teleprompter or aides first editing video was on the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base as she greeted the Americans returning home in President Joe Biden’s multilateral prisoner swap. A snippet of her jumbled syntax was quickly pumped out by Republican National Committee operatives and others: “This is just an extraordinary testament to a president who understands the power of diplomacy and understands the strength that rests in understanding the significance of diplomacy and strengthening alliances.”